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[From the Pkoceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Nov. 4, 1872. | 






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Notes on Pre-Historic'Bemains in the Aleutian Islands 






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S. COAST SURVF.y, 



Captain's linij. U nalashkn .—T]K'Ye are several village sites on this bay whicli, 
inhabited during the period subsequent to the Russian occupation of the terri- 
tory, are now, and long have been deserted. The principal are the Peslriakoff, or 
Kider village, near Cape Cheerful ; one on the south part of Araaknak Island, 
just South of Expedition Island, on Iliuliuk Harbor, and one in Nateekin Bay ; 
beside the Kalekhta Bay village, more recently evacuated by its inhabitants. 
The only localities now inhabited are the village of Imagnee on Summer Bay, 
the village of Iliuliuk, and another of two or three houses, on Uknadok or Hog 
Island. 

In excavating for the erection of a signal, at the northern end of Ulakhta 
Spit, Amaknak Island, the nature of the materials brought out showed that the 
locality had once been inhabited. Subsequent inquiries elicited the fact that 
the oldest inhabitants of Iliuliuk had never heard of any village being situated 
liere, although villages which were deserted in the last century are well known 
by tradition to the Aleuts of the present day. Hence, it is a reasonable sup- 
position that the village under consideration must at least have ante-dated the 
Russian invasion of 1760, and may have been older. Hence, the implements, 
etc., found in this deposit, are in all probability the same as those originally in 
use among the natives of this region before the introduction of manufactured 
articles of trade by civilized nations. On this account they are of singular 
interest. A careful examination of the locality afforded the following observa- 
tions : 

The Ulakhta Spit projects from Amaknak Island, trending nearly in a north 
and south direction. It is very narrow, being in some places only seven meters 
wide, and is composed entirely of shingle overlaid by a stratum of vegetable 
mould, which supports a luxuriant growth of the native grasses. Near the 
junction of the spit with the main island, it rises, and is continued in a series 
of low mounds for a quarter of a mile. Between these mounds and the moun- 
tainous portion of Amaknak Island, called Ulakhta Head, is a low and narrow 
strip of ground containing a small pond of brackish water. The highest of 
these mounds is quite near the north head of the spit, and it was here that my 
signal was located. 

Upon this mound, about twenty feet above high water-mark, by careful scru- 
tiny, I was able to detect at least three depressions of considerable size, which I 
judged to be the sites of houses of the ancient Aleutian fashion, that is to say, 
half underground, of suflicient size to accommodate a number of families, each 



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of which had a sort of compartment to itself. The hardy Aleuts had no fires 
in their houses except for cooking, and this was often done outside. They de- 
scended on a notched stick, through an aperture in the middle of the roof, wliich 
was also the only window. These depressions appeared to me to be the re- 
mains of some of these houses, a supposition afterwards confirmed by our exca- 
vations. 

In digging the hole for tie signal, we got two stone, lamps for burning seal 
oil, about as deep as a saucer, and of an egg-oval shape, exactly similar to some 
I have seen in use among the present Eskimo of Bering Straits. They were 
of soft porphyritic rock and still retained traces of the action of fire. When 
used, they were filled with dried sphagnum soaked in seal oil, which gives out 
considerable light and heat, as well as smoke. We also obtained a bone arrow- 
head of the Eskimo pattern from this excavation. The next time that we visit- 
ed the station, while busy in taking trigonometrical observations, I directed the 
boat's crew to dig in the northwest c Tner of what I supposed to be the remains 
of a house or yourt. This depression was on the crest of the ridge facing east 
and west, the longer sides about forty feet long and- the ends about twenty 
feet. 

The first thing noticed was a sort of wall of rough stones evidently obtained 
from the neighboring beach, with here and there a whale-rib, in a perpendicular 
position, which had probably assisted in supporting the roof. Further excava- 
tion for a couple of feet revealed a human skeleton in perfect preservation. The 
body had been doubled up so as to bring the knees up to the chin. It was ly- 
ing on the right side in a horizontal plane facing the southeast. Two others 
were afterwan-ds discovered in an exactly similar position. They were about 
three feet from the surface, but not so far from the inner wall of the house ; one 
was the skeleton of a woman. A few rough flat stones were placed around and 
under them, but no articles of use or ornament were with the skeletons. It is 
a matter of record that the ancient Aleuts, when a person died in one of their 
houses, built up the body in the compartment which had belonged to the person 
when living, and continued to occupy the remainder of the yourt, as usual. 
The position in which these skeletens were (bund, indicates that such was the 
manner in which they had been interred. It is still a common practice among 
tribes of the Orarian stock, to tie up the body of a dead person in the manner 
just described. Further digging showed that a great part of the mound was 
composed of materials foreign to the locality. These principally consisted of 
bones of cetaceans, fur seal, [Cal/orhmns ursimis) sea lion, [Eumeiopias SteUeri) 
and sea birds, principally ducks and gulls or petrels. There were also large ac- 
cumulations of the shells of edible mollusks, among the most conspicuous of which 
were the common mussel [Mytilus edulis), Saxidomus squalidus, Desh., Tapes 
staminea,Com. and Modiola modiolus L. All the above are still living in these 
seas, most of which are still found in Captain's Bay, and form a portion of the 
food of the existing native population. The sea lion and walrus are no longer 
found in Unalashka, and the fur seal but rarely. That they must have been very 
abundant at one time is evident from the great accumulation of their bones in 



tliis single mound, wliicli was literally half composed of such dL'l)ris. arranged in 
layers separated by vegetable nionld. From these materials we picked out a 
number of articles of interest. 

These were principally stone lamps like those previously described, of various 
sizes, differing in some extent in form and nicety of finish. Besides these there 
were also many large rough stones, either naturally or artificially hollowed out 
on one side, which had been subjected to the action of fire, and were probably 
the pavement or hearth upon which fire had been built for culinary purposes. 
Several rough pieces of cetacean bone were found brought to a sharp sijuare 
edge at one end, and formerly in use for dressing skins. A few stone knives 
were found, all of the native pattern, i. e., shaped like a chopping knife. These 
were of a dark slate-stone, which must have been brought from a locality nearer 
the mainland of America, as it is not found in Unalashka, or the islands west 
of it as far as known. Also a large part of a flat spoon of carved bone, with 
a grooved handle, several awls usually made from the wing bones of birds, bone 
arrow-heads of Eskimo pattern, fragments of bones variously grooved, cut or 
carved, and a little ball of bone half perforated. 'J'his puzzled me for a long 
time, until an old Aleut informed me that, in his boyhood, he had seen such 
things used as buttons, to be placed on the end of a bone lance or arrow, when 
practising at a mark, in order that the point might not become blunted or in- 
jured. None of these articles exhibited any particular skill in carving, or any 
ornamental patterns except of straight lines. A number of chipped flints 
which had evidently been used in striking fire, were also found. 

Further explorations made during the ensuing winter and spring, revealed 
the sites of seven villages on Amaknak Island alone, of which but one or 
two are known even by tradition. Excavations in one or two of these places 
revealed similar implements to those already described ; others might doubtless 
have turned up, but my means and time were too limited to permit very exten- 
sive excavations. I was able, however, to detect two other modes of burial 
among these prehistoric natives. 

In certain places at the foot of overhanging cliffs, a wall had been built up 
until the rock above was reached, and outside a bank of earth or turf covered 
this wall. In the space inside, the debris had then been removed, and in this 
space, on a layer of small sticks of driftwood, the bodies had been laid, one above 
the other. In one ease I found six skeletons, so placed and separated only by 
the layers of sticks and a piece of grass matting similar to that still manufactured 
by the natives of Unalashka. Here again I noted the remarkable absence of any 
utensils or articles of apparel or ornament. Only one bone arrow-head, with a 
piece of its shaft, and a fragment of a wooden mask, were found during the ex- 
amination of some four or five of these caves, crammed with remains of s-kele- 
tons. The bones were much decayed wherever water, percolating through the 
rocks, had been able to reach them, but where they were dry, they were well 
preserved. The bones agreed, in all essential respects, with Eskimo remains 
of similar character; the only anatomical peculiarity was the great stoutuesss of 
the long bdhes and a remarkable thickening of the inner face of the under jaw, 
which was so extensive, in a majority of cases, as to nearly close the space be- 



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tvveen the two halves of the jaw, the bone being over an inch in diameter io 
several cases. 

A small cave exists, under an isolated rock, which stands on one of the raised 
beaches on the middle portion of the island. The entrance is very low, but in- 
side one can stand erect, the cave being about twenty feet in diameter, and of 
an oval form, the highest point of the dome-shaped roof being about ten feet 
above the floor. A good d( al of water had penetrated througii the crevices of 
the rock, and the bones in this cave were very much decayed. I remarked re- 
mains of seven skeletons, arranged around the edges of the cave, that at the 
extremity of the cave furthest from the entrance being the skeleton of a 
woman, and close to it the remains of an infant. The fioor consisted of about 
six inches of black mould, covering the usual shingle of the biaches. A num- 
ber of angular fragments of rock had fallen from above. No remains of ani- 
mals were found here, and if there bad been any wooden articles they had all 
rotted away. 

Near one of the skeletons was found, heaped together, a number of stone 
knives, a bone awl, and two fragments, one of pumice and the other of fine sand" 
stone, with their edges and surfaces smoothed and squared evidently for the pur- 
pose of dressing down the asperities of skins to be used for clothing. The 
most interesting collection was found near the skeleton of the woman, and con- 
sisted of two bone labrets* shaped like those now in use among the Tblinkets 
and Botocudos. These are doubtless very ancient, as all traces of the usage 
have long since passed away. There were besides, a lot of needles made of the 
wing bones of birds, a needle case made of the humerus of some large bird, 
closed at each end by a wooden stopper, bone awls, stone knives, a whetstone 
of fine grained sand rock, and a little case of birch bark containing plumbago. 
Neither the birch, the sandstone, nor the black slate, of which the knives were 
made, nor the plumbago, exist on the island of Unalashka. 

As proved by other researches on the islands of Kadiak and Unga, the early 
Aleuts were accustomed to preserve the remains of their more eminent dead by 
removing the viscera, stuffing the body with dry grass and drying it. This was 
placed in some dry cave, dressed as in life, ornamented with gay apparel, and 
covered with wooden carvings, the most remarkable of which were masks of 
large size, painted of different colors and ornamented with feathers, tufts of 
hair and bristles from the deer. A very great variety of other carvings were 
also placed in these caves,f and sometimes the bodies, placed in natural attitudes, 
were covered entirely with carved wooden armor, or placed in a miniature 
canoe or bidarka, armed as if hunting, or holding a paddle. Women were 
represented as if sewing, dressing skins or nursing their infants ; old men as if 
beating their drums, as they do during the winter-dances in Eskimo villages to 
this day. 

But few of these remains exist in a well preserved condition, yet the extent 
of the practice may be understood from the fact that over thirty difl'urent 
masks, all more or less mutilated, were found in one cave at Unga. Any notes 
in regard to them possess a certain interest, and may be worthy of preserva- 

* PI. II, figs. 1-2. t PI. II, figs. 3-5. 



Proc. Cal. Acad. Sci.Vol. IK . 



H. 11. 




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Fi5 1-2 BOl^E J.A3RET FROM THE AMAKKAK CAVE . 
Fi6.3-5 VoODEiSr CARVINGS EHOM THE CAVE AT DELAROTF HARBOR. 



tion, as before many years have gone by, even the traces of these by-g'one cus- 
toms will have entirely disappeared. 

Shelikoff reported on the first census in 1795 a population of ten thousand 
Aleuts, including thirty-six hundred natives of Kadiak. In 1867 the total 
Aleutian population in the islands amounted to about 1930, according to the re- 
port of Prof. Geo. Davidson, U S. Coast Survey. The census for 1871, as re- 
ported to me by the priest of Unalashka. was 2.t74 in all ; of the inhabitants 
of the islands only, there were in 1870, 1901, with 97 births and 104 deaths ; in 
1871, 1913 souls, with 44 births and .57 deaths ; the increase of 12 being due to 
immigration from Sitka and the mainland. The death rate is slightly the 
largest and a gradual decrease in population is resulting, pointing toward the 
final extinction of the race. 



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